how to import mesh form blender to terragen 2 ?

[mdesign]

Hy everyone,
I am a new Terragen 2 user, and also a Blender user.
I am experiencing some trouble trying to import in Terragen 2 a mesh (terrain)
made with blender.
Whether it is because i not an English native speaking person or because international issues
are affecting me more than I thought , but i can't seem to find a clear way to do it.
what is the simplest way to do it ?
If anyone could help, even by pointing to any valuable link I might have missed, I would be very thankful .  

[Tangled-Universe]

You can import .obj files into TG2.

So export your terrain-model from Blender as .obj.
Before loading into TG2 it might help to just run it through poseray (open it, save it as .obj again).
Sometimes this helps as the .obj file format can be differently implemented among software packages.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Martin

[mdesign]

Thanks Martin, I thought about it, but after some reserches I found that obj objects can't be populated . So maybe there is another way to get a .Ter file or another format i can import and use ?

[mdesign]

I just red more about highmaps http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Textures/Maps/Creating_a_Heightmap_from_a_Plane maybe this is what i need?

[Henry Blewer]

You could use a blend texture to map the lowest (Black) to highest (White) in Blender. Render the height field at high resolution (2000 x2000 is good), using an orthographic, overhead camera in Blender. Save this as a tiff or BMP.

In Terragen 2 or Terragen, select the heightfield. Add a Heightfield load operator. Now at the top of the control window, use the Blender generated image to make the heightfield. This should be much easier to modify and add populations to than a height field obj.

[mdesign]

Thanks a lot, i'll post the result when i 'm done!

[mdesign]

That's it !

Thanks again , now I got it almost right ...
It seems that the free version of TG2 only accept 512x512 picture size for high maps
I still have to scale it up as it is too small for the moment, and everybody knows how size matters

[TheBlackHole]

..
It seems that the free version of TG2 only accept 512x512 picture size for high maps

No, the free version will accept any image size as a heightmap.

[mdesign]

Cool it works indeed !! i took a 2500/2500 pixel image, and sure it rocks fine  

[mdesign]

Here is a post of the result I got so far. It is quite messy and needs some adjustments for lightning and ... almost everything else, but at least that is a good start. Thanks for your comments

[Henry Blewer]

You can use this method for creating land elevations for before and after shots for architectural and engineering visualization. It's not precise, but it will impress a client.

Good start. Try using a redirect shader and some power fractals to add some detail to the hill slopes.

[mdesign]

Indeed njeneb thats almost what i am trying to do.
I need to add then some castle ruins at the top of the hill.
and then create an other image with the hill befor it's been excavated, and with a brain new castle on it

After some twinkling, I still am searching the right image.
I realize that it misses something important : Life.
I wish I could put randomly some flowers and grass to enhance it's living substance.

any advice is welcome  

[Henry Blewer]

You can add detail by making more surface layers. The Surface layer allows very good control of altitude and slope constraints. Adding power fractals to the color and the child inputs can give even more definition to a surface. I tend to think of a surface layer as an eco-nitch; what would be on this amount of slope or at this altitude.

The hard thing to pick up is which scale values to use. The measurement tool at the top of the preview window helps.

[bobbystahr]

Indeed njeneb thats almost what i am trying to do.
I need to add then some castle ruins at the top of the hill.
and then create an other image with the hill befor it's been excavated, and with a brain new castle on it

After some twinkling, I still am searching the right image.
I realize that it misses something important : Life.
I wish I could put randomly some flowers and grass to enhance it's living substance.

any advice is welcome  

I find with the free version being limited to 3 populations, that I often have to resort to image maps[via Surface layer] for small details like
flower dotted grassy fields when I'm not going to be getting too close to the mapped area. By making and using a Grayscale map of the colour map I've used, displacement can also be added which also helps.. ...

[Henry Blewer]

Sometimes rocks really rock. Interesting rock formations with one main interest object look good. Use the two other object populations for sort of background variations.
Normally I only use four populations. One of the main reasons for this is memory use.